The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB said yesterday that only 10 candidates scored 300 marks and above in the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, in the country even as some candidates printed customised shirts and T-shirts where anticipated answers were prepared to cheat during the examination.
JAMB Registrar, Professor, 'Dibu Ojerinde who made this known in Abuja while addressing newsmen said that 40 centres were involved in cheating during the examination, where some candidates paid between N5,000 and N20,000 to be allowed to cheat.
He however, said that JAMB was investigating the centres where malpractices took place, pointing out that those 40 centres might be barred from future UTME if found guilty. He also noted that he did not wish to pre-empt the sanctions to be applied until investigations were concluded.
According to Ojerinde, apart from the 10 candidates who scored above 300 marks, 628 others scored between 270 - 299; 33,115 scored 250 - 269: 704,622 scored 200 and above while 801,804 scored below 200.
He also said that the board recorded 40,692 invalid results due to multiple shading or no shading at all by candidates while the examination was successfully conducted in 3,168 centres.
Ojerinde further said that 1,629,102 candidates applied to sit for the Paper Pencil Test, PPT, while 15,508 candidates applied for the Dual Based Test, DBT bringing the total of candidates to 1,644,110. Out of this figure, 47,974 were absent.
A breakdown of the number of the candidates that sat for the UTME showed that 1,670,833 applied to go to the universities while 28,977 and 28,445 chose Polytechnics and Colleges of Education respectively even as only 25 chose the newly established Innovative Enterprises Institutes.
Innovative Enterprises Institutes according to him, are institutions where skills acquisition are their mandates.
Speaking further, he noted that the result of 78,309 candidates from various centres were at present, undergoing screening to ascertain their culpability in malpractices, while 12,110 candidates' results were being withheld for possible disciplinary action.
On the candidates who printed special T-shirts and shirts with prepared answers, he regretted that candidates for the UTME had always devised new methods of cheating on yearly basis. The Registrar stressed that the examination cheats had graduated from using "magic slippers" to customised T-shirts and shirts in which anticipated answers were imprinted in the sleeves as well as inside the T-shirts.
"Details of the results in order of merit according to courses and institutions of choice of candidates will be dispatched to universities, polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education and innovative enterprises institutes at the appropriate time for the purposes of 2013/2014 admissions.
"It is the policy of the board to ensure that equal opportunity is given to all candidates seeking placement in the nation's tertiary institutions regardless of their physical status. We will continue to appeal to stakeholders to show more interest in the acquisition of higher education by this category of citizens.
"The board hereby reminds everybody that it has implemented the Federal Government's policy which stipulates that all candidates seeking admissions into the universities, polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education and Innovative Enterprises Institutes, Police Academy and the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, must sit for the UTME being conducted by the JAMB.
"The board will continue to appeal to the various state governments concerned to provide their indigenes with enough capacity building programmes that would allow them apply directly to the board so as to compete favourably with their counterparts in other states of the federation. Let me once again state that candidates are allowed to change their choices of institutions and courses only once," he added, noting that the change of institutions must be effected before May 17, 2013, or two weeks from yesterday.
Ojerinde stressed that the Computer Based Test, CBT would hold from Saturday, May 18, 2013, to June 1, 2013 and requested candidates to ensure that they reprint their e-registration slips afresh so as to be sure of their centres.
